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Korean views of China have become so negative that as of 2021, according to a survey by SisaIN, they have sunk lower than views of Japan, likely for the first time since Korea and China normalized relations in 1992. Ahead of the Beijing Olympics (January 2022), we conducted a survey[2] of over 1,000 South Koreans and, similarly, found that their feelings towards China averaged just 26.5 on a scale of 0 (very negative) to 100 (very positive), compared to 30.7 for Japan and 69.1 for the United States. Moreover, 42% of our respondents supported Korea engaging in a diplomatic boycott of the Olympic Games, in line with many Koreans’ complaints that Seoul is too soft on Beijing. These results suggest that anti-Chinese sentiment increasingly has the potential to spill over into the Republic of Korea’s policy and politics.

Korea Is Not Alone

Koreans are not alone in their feelings towards China. Indeed, this trend comes amid a rising tide of anti-Chinese sentiment worldwide. A 2021 survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that unfavorable views of China had reached near historic highs in 17 advanced economies, including Japan (88%), Australia (78%), and the United States (76%), as well as Korea (77%). Our survey also found that 84% of Koreans viewed China unfavorably, demonstrating an increasing prevalence of anti-Chinese sentiments in Korea.

As in many societies, Koreans are very critical of China’s political system and its handling of COVID-19: according to Pew (2021), 92% of Koreans thought that the Chinese government does not respect the personal freedoms of its people, and 71% disapproved of China’s COVID-19 response.[3] In line with the Pew study’s findings, our survey found that 84% of Koreans believe that the Chinese government does not respect its peoples’ personal freedoms, and of respondents who reported negative feelings towards China, 66% cited the pandemic outbreak as a contributing factor.

Still, Korea Differs

Yet, Koreans also express negativity towards China over unique issues that are not shared with other peer countries. Foremost among these is Korea’s air pollution: namely, fine dust and yellow dust, which many believe comes from China. Also cause for negativity are China’s coercive actions towards Korea, such as economic retaliation for the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system.[4]

In particular, Korea is distinctive from its peers for two notable reasons. The first is Koreans’ reaction to China’s perceived cultural imperialism. Over half (55%) of our respondents who had an unfavorable view of China selected cultural conflicts between the two countries (China’s claims to kimchi and hanbok, for example) as well as China’s perceived lack of respect for Korea (62%) as contributing to their negative feelings. Historical issues also loom large for Koreans: 52% of respondents with negative sentiments say they disapprove of China due to disputes between the two countries over history (such as the Northeast Project, which claims that the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo is part of China).

The second factor that makes anti-Chinese sentiment in Korea unique is its demographic underpinnings: namely, the outspokenness of younger generations. Out of 14 countries polled by Pew in 2020, Korea was the only country in which youth (ages 18-29) had a more unfavorable view of China than those ages 50 and older:[5] 80% of youth viewed China unfavorably, compared to 68% of the oldest cohort. The 2021 SisaIN study confirmed that younger Koreans did indeed have the most negative feelings towards China, with those in their 20s holding views nearly two times more negative than those in their 50s and 60s. It is no surprise that, according to our survey, younger Koreans ages 18 through 39 were more likely to support a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics than older cohorts (45% compared to 40%). We interpret these findings as suggesting that younger Koreans who grew up with liberal, democratic values may be more critical of authoritarian, communist China than the older activists of “Generation 586,”[6] who instead grew up amid anti-American sentiments that fostered greater sympathy towards China.

 In this regard, anti-Chinese sentiment in Korea differs from the country’s past anti-American sentiment and enduring anti-Japanese sentiment. The former, especially prominent in the 1980s, represented backlash against U.S. policy and U.S. support of the Korean authoritarian dictatorship. It was not a critique of American people, culture, or institutions, which were still largely respected. Anti-Japanese sentiment is tied to the historical memory of colonial rule and strongly influenced by Korean nationalism. Despite public movements in recent years to boycott Japan and Japanese products, Koreans still import and enjoy Japanese culture, food, and fashion. In contrast, anti-Chinese sentiment is a critique of Chinese cultural imperialism and illiberalism: few Koreans view China’s institutions as exemplary or say that their country should learn from China.

Spillover to Politics and Policy

Negative views towards China have the potential to affect Korean politics. Our survey found that a large majority of respondents, 78%, indicated that among other issues both domestic and international (including housing prices, North Korea, and unemployment), ROK-China relations will be an important consideration when deciding which presidential candidate to vote for. For almost a quarter (22.4%) of respondents, this was a “very important” consideration. It is no surprise, then, that presidential candidates joined the public in expressing anger at the Olympics’ hanbok incident. Given that younger Koreans are expected to be the deciding factor in this election, it is particularly significant that 82% of respondents in their 20s said that ROK-China relations would be an important issue when voting. This atmosphere recalls that of 2002, when anti-American sentiments[7] swept the Korean presidential election between Roh Moo Hyun and Lee Hoi Chang, tipping the vote in favor of Roh. This time, however, the anti-Chinese sentiment may play out in favor of the conservatives, who tend to be tougher on China and emphasize the U.S.-ROK alliance.

It is worth noting that in the midst of the ongoing U.S.-China rivalry, Koreans increasingly favor the United States over China. A 2019 survey by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies shows waning support for China and increasing support for the United States: in 2014, nearly 25% of Koreans supported strengthening ties with China over the United States, compared to almost 60% who favored the United States. By 2019, support for China had dropped to 18.9%, and for the United States had increased to 75%.[8] In the past, Korea has regarded China as an economic opportunity, while leaning closer to the United States for security reasons; a paradigm called “an-mi-gyung-jung” (“United States for security, China for the economy”). Now, most Koreans believe that this balancing act has run its course: we found that only 43% of Koreans agree with this paradigm to some degree, with younger Koreans showing the lowest proportion of agreement (38%).

Once regarded as a place of economic opportunities for Korea, China is increasingly losing favor as Koreans, led by young people, begin to rethink what China means to their nation – a trend akin to Koreans’ questioning of their relationship with the United States in the 1980s. This will pose a major foreign policy challenge for the new administration in Seoul, which will have to manage the bilateral relation with China in the midst of rising public sentiment against the country.

At the same time, the increase in positive attitude among Koreans towards the United States could offer an excellent opportunity for the U.S.-ROK alliance, which faced stress under the Trump and Moon administrations. The Biden administration should move quickly to fill the U.S. ambassador position in Seoul, meet with the next Korean president as soon as s/he is sworn in, and work closely with the future ROK administration to strengthen ties. Washington should not waste time, especially as a more strongly pro-alliance cohort of young Koreans grows into a political force that will shape their country’s future.

Gi-Wook Shin is the Director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Korea Program. Haley M. Gordon is a Research Associate at the Korea Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Hannah June Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and a former Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia at APARC.

The results show that the pandemic’s broad social and economic impact has adversely affected population health well beyond those directly suffering from COVID-19. Study participants with chronic conditions faced significant challenges in managing their symptoms during the pandemic. They experienced a loss of income and difficulties in accessing healthcare or medications, with the resulting delayed and foregone care leading to uncertain longer-term effects. For a nontrivial portion of participants, these factors are associated with the worsening of diabetes symptoms. The threat is twofold among people living in rural populations with limited access, availability, and affordability of healthcare services.

A Global Health Priority

The unintended adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic disease care may also further aggravate inequality in health outcomes. “If the trend continues and no immediate actions are taken to mitigate pandemic impacts,” Eggleston and her colleagues caution, then “the Asia-Pacific region will struggle to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.4 to reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases by a third relative to 2015 levels and to promote mental health and wellbeing.”

Addressing the pandemic’s unintended negative social and economic impacts on chronic disease care is a global health priority, determine the researchers. They propose several measures to help provide timely care for people with chronic conditions in resource-constrained settings. These include implementing innovations in healthcare delivery models to improve the adoption of healthy lifestyle changes and self-management of chronic disease and mild COVID-19 symptoms, increasing investment in interventions to provide social and economic support to disadvantaged populations, and strengthening primary healthcare infrastructure and support of healthcare providers.

The study was supported in part by funding from Shorenstein APARC’s faculty research award, Stanford King Center for Global Development, and a seed grant from the Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education.

The grand bargain led to China's continued growth. The drawback, however, was that this economic growth has been accompanied by the accumulation of local government debt with little transparency and central control. When the global financial crisis impacted growth rates, local deficits and debts spiked. In response, Beijing began to shut down backdoor financing and opened front-door options that were transparent and under the control of national authorities — but with limited success.

Reining in Local Government Financing Vehicles

The researchers posit that "only beginning in 2017 did the Communist Party’s own Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs and various government-related media begin to label local government debt as a threat to the economy, raising the alarm bells by calling it a 'gray rhino,' a likely high-impact threat that was being ignored." Why, then, didn’t Beijing quickly put a stop to local government debt? Why did central authorities wait until 2015 to put measures in place, and wait even longer to identify local government debt as an economic threat?

Oi and her colleagues explain that studies of policy implementation and regulation in China tell us that the national government faces information asymmetry problems, where localities can subvert upper-level directives because the center has imperfect knowledge of what local agents are doing. Such subversion is most likely when local interests are not aligned with Beijing’s. Now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question is whether the pendulum will swing back toward more tolerance of local debt for the sake of economic growth.

All indications, the authors agree, suggest that during COVID-19 and its aftermath, especially as China also has vowed to win and maintain the fruits of the battle against poverty “at all costs,” localities are going to need extra resources, borrowed or not. The center’s pendulum, at least for now, is swinging further away from fiscal discipline toward local incentives and growth.

Evading Institutional Reforms

Oi and her colleagues contend that the expansion of local government debt is a feature of China's developmental model, which aims to "circumvent rather than tackle difficult institutional reform, kicking the can down the road, opting for an easier fix to avoid the potentially high political costs.” 

The authors' primary takeaway is therefore that local government debt in China is not a local problem. Similar to other developing nations that depend upon local partners, China faces a dual-commitment problem: "growing the local economy without debt requires the central state to simultaneously commit to respecting its local agents’ access to and control over the fruits of local development (of which local fiscal resources are the most crucial part), while exercising credible fiscal discipline over precisely the same set of local agents that the center seeks to incentivize.”

For nearly three decades, Chinese central authorities have relied on the grand bargain to boost the nation's economic might. Oi and her colleagues reveal that the problem of local government debt reverberates to the highest echelons of the Chinese state decision makers and continues to present strategic challenges for the economic juggernaut.